V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai

The man who "invented EMAIL"

In November, 2011, there was a sudden uproar over a man,
V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai, claiming to have
invented email/EMAIL. The first and most important thing to clarify is the
use of "email" versus "EMAIL", because case matters here. The word
email (or e-mail) is a word that denotes "electronic mail", and is
generically applied to any technology that incorporates sending and receiving
electronic mail messages. The term "EMAIL" (all caps) refers to a
specific computer system for electronic mail. This is readily
apparent in Ayyadurai's copyright
registration (TXu000111775 / 1982-08-30). That means
that "EMAIL" was a system for using email, but not necessarily the
first. It only means that Ayyadurai was the first to apply for a copyright
on the name, and he may have done so based on previous public usage of
the term. For example, one image of Ayyadurai on his own web site
is titled "vashiva-time-man-who-invented-email.png", where 'email' is in
lower case. One could argue that as a filename, he stuck to lower case.
On the other hand, why name the image this instead of "vashiva-time.png"?

The second issue, and just as important for the purpose of this
article, is clarifying what Ayyadurai claims to have invented exactly.
It is immediately suspect that he went on a press binge in late 2011,
appearing to ride the wave of attention it brought. Why didn't he
make a bigger deal of this years before? It is also important to note
that he does not appear to dispute any of the press or their perception
of events, rather he embraces
and openly flaunts it on his own web site. To better examine this
point, one only has to read the news articles about his claims.

I had the opportunity to sit down with V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, who holds the first copyright for "EMAIL" - a system he began building in 1978 at just 14 years of age. It was modeled after the communication system being used at the
University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark, New Jersey. His task: replicate the University's traditional mail system electronically.

And with that, email - as we currently know it - was born. -- Time Magazine

V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai has nothing against the tech pioneers who started sending one another messages over the Arpanet - the Internet's predecessor - in the late
1960s and early 1970s. He just asserts that he was the first person to build an e-mail system that would evolve into the type of e-mail we use today,
with fields for the sender and recipient, subject lines, and that devious BCC field. -- Boston Globe

Shiva modeled his simple, generic user interface after the memos he'd seen in use at the university. "A typical MAIL had the title of MEMORANDUM, with 'To:', 'From:', 'Date:', 'Subject:', 'Cc:', 'Bcc:', 'Attachment', elements. This
was the meaning of MAIL," Shiva also writes on his site. -- Huffington Post

These quotes, some directly from Ayyadurai, make it abundantly clear that he is taking credit
for inventing 'email' (lower case) as we know it. He specifically justifies this claim by
citing the use of headers such as sender, recipient, subject line, and the BCC field. All of this
in 1978 according to him, while getting a copyright on 'EMAIL' (upper case) in 1982. Ayyadurai
also created an infographic
showing the 'history of email' that specifically lists "Pre-EMAIL Innovators" (note: one
of which is Crocker et al, RFC 733, discussed later). That gives
a well-defined point of reference to investigate his claims. The one other possibility
to consider, which he apparently has not, is that he may have 'invented' some portions of
email concurrently, without knowledge of other researchers. Given how definitive he is his
statements, that is not likely.

There are two basic points to examine, that shed light on Ayyadurai's claims:

Looking at these in a historical context, multiple email systems had been around starting in 1965.
While Ayyadurai was only 14 when he started his email system, that means his in 1982 was already
17 years after the first, and 10 years after the mail command on Unix. It is understandable that
he may not have been familiar with CTSS, but not having access to or being told about Unix
at that point seems more difficult to believe.

The Wikipedia article summarizes all of this as:

In 1971 the first ARPANET email was sent, and through RFC 561, RFC 680, RFC 724 and finally 1977's RFC 733, became a standardized working system.

Number 2: Email, as Seen Through RFCs

An RFC, or Request For Comments,
is a "memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) describing methods, behaviors, research, or
innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems." Essentially, RFCs are
the commonly accepted building blocks and a blueprint for how the Internet and related technology should be
implemented to guarantee interopability. While RFCs are not mandatory for adoption, it encourages more
people follow the guidelines to ensure they can 'speak' to other networks. More importantly, for our purposes,
they show a detailed history of technical ideas.

RFC 0524 (13 June 1973) -
"It's a proposed specification for handling mail in the Network -- a Mail Protocol." This is
the first RFC that set forth the basics of email.

RFC 0561 (5 September 73) -
"One of the deficiences of the current FTP mail protocol is that it makes no provision for
the explicit specification of such header information as author, title, and date."
Building on RFC 0524, this one establishes more details of electronic mail and set forth
standards for headers, some of which Ayyadurai specifically uses to establish he created
the first email system.

RFC 0680 (April 30, 1975) -
"This document defines a number of message fields beyond those discussed in RFC 561." By this
point, the number of headers available in an email message was considerable.

RFC 0724 (12 May 1977) -
"ARPA's Committee on Computer-Aided Human Communication (CAHCOM) wishes to promulgate an official
standard for the format of ARPA Network mail headers which will adequately meet the needs
of the various message service subsystems on the Network today.
As message services grew in sophistication, the need for specific header items in RFC 561's
"miscellaneous" category grew: "To:" and "cc:", especially, were generated and recognized by several
different message services." Most notable, this RFC specifically mentions the
To, CC, BCC, and FCC fields. The BCC field is specifically brought up by Ayyadurai
saying the BCC field came from "Michelson [doing] this. If he wanted to spread a message, he would 'CC' it. If he
wanted to let his boss know but he didn't want other people to know because of certain office politics, he
would 'BCC' it."

If the information above still leaves you wondering, consider a
blog
post on the Washington Post where almost 100 user comments refute the claim
as well, many of them citing additional excellent resources: